ABSTRACT
Angola had been part of Portugal’s overseas territories for over 400 years by the time the rise of African nationalism started to shake the edifice of the Lusophone empire. An economic boom in the early 1960s, spurred by the exploitation of oil (particularly in the northern Cabinda province), diamond mining and the high price of coffee made the 300,000 White Portuguese settlers in Angola intransigent, compounded by the attitude of the quasi-fascist regime in Lisbon which viewed Angola as an inalienable part of Portugal. Thus the course was set for conflict with Black nationalist organisations bent on freeing Angola from Lisbon’s rule (Marcum, 1969; Wheeler, 1971). Portugal’s war to retain Angola was to be long and bloody, and left the country open to massive outside interference once Lisbon vacated the scene (see Van der Waal, 1993).
